Doom Roguelike Analysis: Angel of Berserk Dual Challenges (0.9.9.7/0.9.9.8)

Angel dual-Challenge post the third!

Doomguy may only attack with melee weapons. (His fists count) Large Health Globes give 50 actions of Berserk when picked up.

This is of course very, very constrictive, and the early game will almost always be very tense and easy to die in.

Angel of 100

Effect: Completely removes all fixed floor generation cases, with the game ending upon completing your 100th floor.

As I touched on some in the Angel of Marksmanship post prior, Angel of Berserk combined with Angel of 100 is usually going to be much harder than just a standard Angel of Berserk run. The emphasis here is on 'usually', mind; I once had a 'plain' Angel of 100 run that I wasn't intending to be a melee build spawn into the first floor with the Butcher's Cleaver in sight, and went 'welp, I guess this is a melee run now'. So you could find a great melee weapon quite early...

... but having done a number of Angel of 100 runs, my experience is that it's pretty rare to see better than Combat Knives at any point in the entire run. For a Malicious Blades Technician, that's not necessarily a big deal, but for Marines and Scouts it's a big power drop relative to standard runs giving reliable access to an early Chainsaw, and then reliable access later in the game to an even stronger melee weapon. Notably, Azrael's Scythe and the Spear of Longinus are completely impossible to get in Angel of 100, not simply unlikely to be seen, so even late-game power is virtually guaranteed to be a big drop compared to a 'vanilla' Angel of Berserk run.

0.9.9.8 making the Chainsaw less absurdly rare to spawn 'naturally' helps some, but it's still not really expected to see a Chainsaw in an Angel of 100 run.

For a Malicious Blades Technician, this is probably actually a little easier than a 'vanilla' Angel of Berserk run, but harder than a 'vanilla' Angel of 100 run since ranged viability is a big part of what makes Malicious Blades decent by default. Malicious Blades is in fact probably the easiest entry point for trying this combo... unless you get lucky and find Mjollnir or whatever.

On the plus side, ammo starvation is not a concern. Healing starvation is, and Armor disintegration is as well: I'd strongly recommend Assembling Nanofiber Armor fairly quickly if you don't get lucky with a naturally indestructible Armor or Onyx Mod find, as Armor disintegrating faster than you can find replacements is a much more reliable issue in Angel of 100 melee runs than in standard melee runs. (Special Levels are generous with Armors)

Angel of Light Travel

Effect: Doomguy has only 5 slots for carrying items, but he generates 20% more Energy per game tick.

My experience is that for Scouts and Marines, this combo is easier than a plain Angel of Berserk run. The increased Energy generation makes a particularly large difference in the early game, the limited inventory size is initially basically a fiction since Angel of Berserk results in ignoring most possible pickups and eating Medpacks faster than normal, and Angel of Berserk's biggest hazard is the probability of dying early on. The limited inventory only starts being annoying once you're past the Angel of Berserk Death Zone, at which point your run tends to be very safe simply because melee builds are very strong once they get going.

Though you should probably Assemble a Nanofiber Armor as soon as possible if you don't get indestructible Armor some other way. A 'vanilla' Angel of Berserk run can often cart around 5+ spare Armors on top of a pile of Medpacks and Mod Packs, but Angel of Light Travel obviously makes that impossible, and even just carrying around 1-2 spare Armors is not ideal. A single mediocre-but-indestructible Armor is all you really need, and you seriously can't spare inventory space on extras.

For Technicians, I find this combo a bit rougher, simply because Malicious Blades isn't as strong at pure melee combat. On the other hand, easy access to Whizkid makes it easier to fully leverage Mod Packs without spending inventory slots on them, so it's not all bad, and it's not like Angel of Berserk is using the Prepared slot for ammo or weapon swaps, so Malicious Blades 'eating' that slot isn't meaningfully increasing the Angel of Light Travel inventory crunch. Malicious Blades also gets more proportionate benefit out of Angel of Light Travel's increase in Energy generation, since it isn't going to be constantly Berserking. (For reference, +20% Energy generation is only about 13.3% faster than 150% Energy generation) So honestly, I might just be bad at this playing this combo with a Technician rather than it being that bad for Technicians.

Angel of Impatience

Effect: Medpacks, Envirosuit Packs, and Phase Devices are immediately used on pickup, like Powerups.

I've tried this, but only ever with a Marine so I'd have Vampyre's healing. It... never went well... 'cause yeah, melee builds really need Medpacks available to pull through bad situations! Not being able to carry around Medpacks is not solved by 'get better at corner-shooting', because this is Angel of Berserk, you can't corner-shoot!

I assume someone out there has made it through this combo at some point, but it's one of the more nightmarish Dual-Angel Challenges you can inflict on yourself. I've not managed to win it, and cannot recommend it as an Interesting Experience even if you're fine with losing a lot.

Angel of Confidence

Effect: You start the game in Deimos 1. (ie floor 9)

Well, no Chainsaw for you. So that's a concern.

... honestly, this just sounds like a way to die a lot like a floor or two in...

Angel of Purity

Effect: Powerups do nothing.

For Vampyre Marines, I find this combo to be not too bad, as Medpacks tend to end up reasonably abundant. Well. 'Not too bad' relative to plain Angel of Berserk, I mean. For a Blademaster Scout, I find it very tense, because I have to work much harder to keep my Medpack usage at a sustainable rate, but still not too bad once I manage to get to the Chainsaw. (Skipping Hell's Arena, of course)

For the Technician I've never been able to even get through the Phobos Anomaly. Yeah.

Angel of Red Alert

Effect: A nuke with a five minute timer is placed at Doomguy's feet upon entering each new floor. Scouts also don't get to passively know stair locations.

To my surprise, when I gave this combo a go, I didn't find it to be that bad. Constantly Berserking makes things go quick, melee builds don't spend time on picking up ammo and the like, no time gets spent on reloading, etc. I still didn't like it, because I just don't like Angel of Red Alert, but it wasn't the absolute nightmare I really expected it to be.

Angel of Darkness

Effect: Doomguy's base line of sight is reduced by 2 tiles (ie from 8 to 6), the game doesn't display tiles not currently in line of sight, and corpses Doomguy can't currently see have a chance to resurrect periodically. By extension, 'You feel relatively safe now' will never display. Scouts also don't get to passively know stair locations. Experience is gained twice as fast.

As I have done Angel of Darkness variations very little, you should take this with a grain of salt, but I suspect this might be not so bad, all things considered? Angel of Berserk already forces you to weather fire from enemies you can't fight back against, losing 2 tiles of sight doesn't meaningfully change that for pure melee combat, and Berserking melee strikes are decently prone to gibbing enemies, so enemies resurrecting will get prevented incidentally a certain amount of the time. The doubled experience would also noticeably shorten the extremely painful period in which Berserker has not been taken, and Angel of Berserk's early game is really where most of the danger lies. Adding Angel of Darkness to Angel of Berserk might actually be overall easier than a 'vanilla' Angel of Berserk run? At least, easier for a good portion of the run. Late in the game when you're already high in experience, I'd expect the upside to be less impactful than the downside, but on the other hand Angel of Berserk's late-game tends to be so easy it's kind of boring, so I'm not sure how impactful it would really be.

But I still haven't tried it, so hey, maybe someday I'll give it a go and realize I'm not thinking of a bunch of ways it'd be horrible!

Angel of Masochism

Effect: Almost all healing fails to increase HP. (The Marine's Vampyre Mastery still functions) Gaining a level heals Doomguy to 200%.

To my surprise. I found this combo nowhere near as bad as Angel of Impatience+Angel of Berserk. A Marine can quickly max out Badass to get more value out of the level-up heal, and rely on Vampyre to keep themselves going between level-ups. I beat the game doing this combo once, in fact. It was very difficult and very tense at times, but it was strategic and interesting. Probably the funniest thing about it was that it was a run where I was glad to see Barons of Hell; high-HP enemies with easily-Dodged projectiles were easy to gain HP off of fighting, where eg Former Captains weren't going to kill me but they were likely to shave off more HP than I got out of killing them.

Though all that was specifically me doing a Marine run. I've yet to get around to trying this combo with a Scout or Technician, and I suspect I'd find those massively harder. Especially the Technician; that just sounds miserable, honestly.

Angel of Overconfidence

Effect: You start the game in Hell 1. (ie floor 17)

I honestly don't remember if I tried this once and it was horrible, or if I never got around to it.

On the plus side, 0.9.9.8 moving the Unholy Cathedral to Hell 1 should make it slightly more viable? I think? Or maybe it makes it way harder to have Berserker in time for the Unholy Cathedral and so actually it's horrible for this combo, I dunno.

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Next time, we cover Angel of Pacifism's dual-Challenge list.

See you then.